In A Moment, Lives Take Tragic Turn

Desrene Taylor said she could never really understand how a child could fall out a window or off a porch when she heard about such accidents in the news.

Unfortunately, Taylor learned the answer in a tragic way. Her 2-year- old grandson remained unconscious and in critical condition with severe head injuries Monday after falling about 12 feet from her second-floor rear porch in Hartford.

``It doesn't take no time -- just a split second,'' Taylor said Monday as she sat gazing at the spot from which the toddler tumbled. ``I'd see this on TV, and I'd wonder, `How does that happen?' Now I know.''

Richard Brown, wearing a diaper, was with his grandmother and his 3-year-old brother Sunday evening on the back porch of their Enfield Street home. He tumbled off the second-floor porch, falling through an opening where a railing post was missing, and landed on concrete.

``It was taken out. We'd put it back in, and then it would be taken out again,'' Taylor said of the wooden post that was missing. ``I'm just out of my mind about this.''

The accident took place shortly before 8 p.m. at the rear of 98 Enfield St. Taylor was caring for four of her grandchildren that night. They were enjoying the summer evening, licking up ice cream they had just bought from a passing ice cream truck, when Taylor went upstairs with the 2- year-old and a 3-year-old.

She stopped on the second- floor porch with the two children. Taylor said she leaned over the side of the porch, looking away from the two youngsters momentarily, to call to the older children, who were now playing on the side of the house, to return to the back driveway so they could remain in her view. That's when Richard fell.

``By the time I turned my head, I saw him go through. I couldn't do nothing,'' Taylor said, unable to shake the image from her mind as she sat on the porch.

The 2-year-old was not bleeding and cried out ``Mama,'' when she ran to pick him up, she said. She rushed upstairs with the boy, put some cold water on him and wrapped him in a towel. She and the boy's mother drove to the Mount Sinai campus of St. Francis Hospital with the child.

Richard was immediately transferred to the Connecticut Children's Medical Center, where he was on a life-support system Monday and was suffering internal bleeding around the brain.

Within 10 minutes after Richard's fall, the boy's grandfather had nailed a piece of plywood to the porch railing, covering the approximately 10-inch-wide opening to prevent further accidents.